Tfhio - JScholarship - Johns Hopkins University

APOLOGETICVS 4, 5 19
sentenced under them should be cut in pieces by their creditors,
yet was this cruelty afterwards blotted out by pubhc consent,
the punishment of death being converted into a mark of disgrace.
By the resort to a pubhc sale of property they preferred
to raise the blush of shame rather than to shed blood. How
many laws still he hidden for you to purify, laws which neither
antiquity nor the dignity of their framers, but only their fairness
(if such there be) commends? and therefore when they are
recognised to be unfair, though condemning, they are deservedly
condemned. But how do we call them unfair? Nay, if they
punish the mere name, we call them fooHsh also. If however
it is deeds that they punish, why, in our case, do they punish
•deeds on the ground merely of the name, which in other cases
they maintain must be proved by the act and not from the name
given to the accused ? I am guilty of incest; why do they not
inquire into it? of infanticide, why do they not extort a confession
? I commit some offence against the gods or the Cae^rs;
why am I not heard, when I am able to clear myself ? No law
forbids the investigation of that which is prohibited, because
neither can any judge rightly exact punishment unless, ;he
knows that an illegal offence has been committed; nor can ^ny
citizen loyally obey the law, if ignorant of the nature of that
which is punished by the law. The law is not only bound to
satisfy itself as to its own intrinsic justice; it must also satisfy
those from whom it looks for obedience. A law excites suspicion
if it is not wilhng to be tested, and it is wicked if, after being
•disapproved, it claims despotic power.
CHAP. V. And now to treat somewhat more fully of the
origin of laws of this kind, there was an old decree that no
god should be consecrated by the emperor without the approval
of the senate. M. Aemilius learnt this in the case of his god
Alburnus. This, too, makes in our favour, because among you
divinity is weighed out by human caprice. Unless a god shall
have been acceptable to man, he shall not be a god: man must
now be propitious to a god. Accordingly Tiberius, in whose
time the Christian name first made its appearance in the world,
laid before the senate tidings from Syria Palaestina which had
revealed to him the truth of the divinity there manifested, and
supported the motion by his own vote to begin with. The
senate rejected it because it had not itself given its approval.
Caesar held to his own opinion and threatened danger to the
accusers of the Christians. Consult your records: you will there
find that Nero was the first emperor who wreaked his fury in
the blood of Christians, when our rehgion was just springing
2—2